Salim Ali, in his book of Indian birds has described this kingfisher’s size as similar to that of a house sparrow. What picture will better explain this bird’s sparrow-like size than the picture above? So, this is a cute little kingfisher with blue or bluish-green back and wings.It has a rusty orange breast and belly.

Look at the teeny-tiny kingfisher sitting atop a lotus bud!These kingfishers are found near water bodies like streams,ponds etc.It is interesting to note that they are indicators of the health of the freshwater ecosystem. A higher population indicates less water pollution. If they feed from heavily polluted water bodies, they will suffer from a build up of toxins in their body. The toxins accumulate when they feed daily on fish and other aquatic insects that has acquired toxins from polluted water.

They are They are a type of river kingfishers and hence have a diet that is dominated by fish and other aquatic life.This aquatic diet is also the reason why they are found near water. Here a pair can be seen sitting on the edge of a boat on the look out for prey. If you look closely, you can tell that the bird on the right has lighter bill color compared to bird on the left. In common kingfisher, although male and female are similar, females have orangish lower bill whereas male has an all black bill.

Terms of Use & Disclaimer

AtoZbirds.com is here to help you enoy birds.This site's textual content and the image sequence is licensed under a (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) Creative Commons -Attribution- Non Commercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License under certain restrictions to safe guard my hardwork & IPR. Please read it all before using this site or its content for any of your purposes.

Credits & Big Thank You

My heartfelt thanks to all the nature lovers who have very generously shared their photographs & sound recordings.Without them, this website would not be here to educate and raise awareness! I thank all the open source initiatives for making enormous knowledge available free and open for all.I thank my family and friends for their loving support.Read fully...